Formation Journal Reading Plan

4:1 Now when Mordecai found out all that was done, Mordecai tore his clothes, and put on sackcloth with ashes, and went out into the midst of the city, and wailed loudly and a bitterly.

4:2 He came even before the king’s gate, for no one is allowed inside the king’s gate clothed with sackcloth.

4:3 In every province, wherever the king’s commandment and his decree came, there was great mourning among the Jews, and fasting, and weeping, and wailing; and many lay in sackcloth and ashes.

4:4 Esther’s maidens and her eunuchs came and told her this, and the queen was exceedingly grieved. She sent clothing to Mordecai, to replace his sackcloth; but he didn’t receive it.

4:5 Then Esther called for Hathach, one of the king’s eunuchs, whom he had appointed to attend her, and commanded him to go to Mordecai, to find out what this was, and why it was.

4:6 So Hathach went out to Mordecai, to city square which was before the king’s gate.

4:7 Mordecai told him of all that had happened to him, and the exact sum of the money that Haman had promised to pay to the king’s treasuries for the destruction of the Jews.

4:8 He also gave him the copy of the writing of the decree that was given out in Shushan to destroy them, to show it to Esther, and to declare it to her, and to urge her to go in to the king, to make supplication to him, and to make request before him, for her people.

4:9 Hathach came and told Esther the words of Mordecai.

4:10 Then Esther spoke to Hathach, and gave him a message to Mordecai:

4:11 “All the king’s servants, and the people of the king’s provinces, know, that whoever, whether man or woman, comes to the king into the inner court without being called, there is one law for him, that he be put to death, except those to whom the king might hold out the golden scepter, that he may live. I have not been called to come in to the king these thirty days.”

4:12 They told to Mordecai Esther’s words.

4:13 Then Mordecai asked them return answer to Esther, “Don’t think to yourself that you will escape in the king’s house any more than all the Jews.

4:14 For if you remain silent now, then relief and deliverance will come to the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. Who knows if you haven’t come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”

4:15 Then Esther asked them to answer Mordecai,

4:16 “Go, gather together all the Jews who are present in Shushan, and fast for me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day. I and my maidens will also fast the same way. Then I will go in to the king, which is against the law; and if I perish, I perish.”

4:17 So Mordecai went his way, and did according to all that Esther had commanded him.

41:1 For the Chief Musician. A Psalm by David. Blessed is he who considers the poor. Yahweh will deliver him in the day of evil.

41:2 Yahweh will preserve him, and keep him alive. He shall be blessed on the earth, and he will not surrender him to the will of his enemies.

41:3 Yahweh will sustain him on his sickbed, and restore him from his bed of illness.

41:4 I said, “Yahweh, have mercy on me! Heal me, for I have sinned against you.”

41:5 My enemies speak evil against me: “When will he die, and his name perish?”

41:6 If he comes to see me, he speaks falsehood. His heart gathers iniquity to itself. When he goes abroad, he tells it.

41:7 All who hate me whisper together against me. They imagine the worst for me.

41:8 “An evil disease,” they say, “has afflicted him. Now that he lies he shall rise up no more.”

41:9 Yes, my own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, who ate bread with me, has lifted up his heel against me.

41:10 But you, Yahweh, have mercy on me, and raise me up, that I may repay them.

41:11 By this I know that you delight in me, because my enemy doesn’t triumph over me.

41:12 As for me, you uphold me in my integrity, and set me in your presence forever.

41:13 Blessed be Yahweh, the God of Israel, from everlasting and to everlasting! Amen and amen.

11:1 I ask then, did God reject his people? May it never be! For I also am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin.

11:2 God didn’t reject his people, which he foreknew. Or don’t you know what the Scripture says about Elijah? How he pleads with God against Israel:

11:3 “Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have broken down your altars; and I am left alone, and they seek my life.”

11:4 But how does God answer him? “I have reserved for myself seven thousand men, who have not bowed the knee to Baal.”

11:5 Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace.

11:6 And if by grace, then it is no longer of works; otherwise grace is no longer grace. But if it is of works, it is no longer grace; otherwise work is no longer work.

11:7 What then? That which Israel seeks for, that he didn’t obtain, but the chosen ones obtained it, and the rest were hardened.

11:8 According as it is written, “God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear, to this very day.”

11:9 David says, “Let their table be made a snare, and a trap, a stumbling block, and a retribution to them.

11:10 Let their eyes be darkened, that they may not see. Bow down their back always.”